wild country: art, community and the rural
DESCRIPTION
A short monograph about the political context of rural arts workTRANSCRIPT
Wild Country: Art,
Community and the Rural
John Mulloy
2009
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Introduction
Arts-based community development has many
problems, not the least of which is describing what it
is that its practitioners are trying to achieve. As soon
as we try to do this, we head into very boggy terrain,
such as the age old debates over the importance of
process (community) versus the importance of
product (art), and then stagger into the brambles of
just what is a quality arts experience anyway?
Because the underlying philosophy of ‘community
arts’ has always been based on a pragmatic
approach – ‘whatever it takes to get the job done’ –
we lose sight of just what ‘the job’ is. It is clearly
beyond the scope of a little document like this to
clear this cluttered landscape, so this is to be read
as not so much a blueprint as a test survey, putting
down some markers and asking questions.
One particularly soggy area is the queasy
relationship between the people doing this work and
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the State. Is arts-based community development
simply part of governance – the means by which the
bureaucracy has spread the system of government
throughout the society? Or is arts-based community
development the heir to the struggles for cultural
democracy of the 1960s and 70s? These are not
necessarily either/or questions, but they point to the
possibility of betrayal inherent in the word
collaboration – which side are you really on? Not
being clear about this then leads to a lack of clarity
about the role of funders, of artists, of community
development workers and of participants.
Exclusion is central to the formation of both
community and the arts, through the generation of
social and class distinctions. It will be argued that
the Irish nation-state is a racially-defined agent of
global capitalism (‘the Irish economy’), and that the
artworld, part of this system, neutralises opposition
by substituting art for political action. As the nation-
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state constantly re-defines itself through the
production of citizens and ‘non-nationals’, could the
focus of arts-based community development on
‘community’ and ‘difference’ support this process?
We will begin with a brief look at ‘art’, move on to
‘community’ and the ‘rural’, and return to ‘arts-based
community development’.
1. Art: Expression, Practice, Distinction and Autonomy
Much of the theory that has traditionally been
used in community arts is the visual art theory
developed by the American Pragmatist philosopher,
John Dewey in the 1930’s. Dewey argued that a ‘true’
belief is one which leads to successful action - the
truth is ‘whatever works’. Dewey’s Art As Experience
(1934) viewed art as expressing the life of a
community in a universal language, open to anyone
prepared to enter into the spirit of the relevant
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community. He stressed that experience is the aim
of art, and emphasised the instrumental aim of
improving our immediate experience through
sociocultural transformation, the integration of art
and life. Creating an object of art is an act of
expression - not just an emotional discharge, but
the ‘meaningful embodiment of an experience’ in a
medium such as paint, wood, sound etc. Most
importantly, the “actual work of art is what the
product does with and in experience”, something
quite distinct from the product itself, and naturally
leading to an emphasis on the process, the
experience of making and doing art.
After World War II, art theory became dominated
by discussions about art’s formal qualities, but in the
1980s there was a revival of Pragmatism, which
opened aesthetics up to the idea of a ‘dialogic’
practice. This ‘new aesthetics’ can be seen in the
writing of Nicholas Bourriaud, whose Relational
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Aesthetics (1998) suggests that we should judge
artworks on the basis of the inter-human relations
which they represent, produce or prompt. This theory
reflected much of the art practice of the mid 1990s
to early 2000s. One weakness of a lot of this work
was that the sociological role of ‘art’ tended to get
forgotten, especially the fact that access to the arts
are key markers of status and exclusion in society.
The classic examination of this is Pierre
Bourdieu’s Distinction: A social critique of the
judgement of taste, (1979), where he argues that
there two core ‘dispositions’ concerning the arts, the
‘Aesthetic’ and the ‘Ethical’ dispositions. Which one
you have depends on your level of education and
your social class. The ‘Aesthetic disposition’ belongs
to the dominant, educated classes and values form
over the subject, creating ‘difficult’ works of art. This
reinforces the autonomy and ‘universality’ of the arts
and their divorce from daily life in a culture of
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elitism. By contrast, the ‘Ethical disposition’ stems
from “a deep-rooted demand for participation”, and
rejects the refusal of the aesthetic to engage in the
human. It values subject-matter over form and
celebrates notions of collectivity.
As a result, your ‘taste’ and your level of
participation in the arts serve to show what class
you are, what your social status is. This use of
culture as a mark of distinction from those of ‘lesser
taste’ means that the cultural elite will inevitably be
opposed to cultural democracy, while the
‘marginalised’ equally come to regard art as the
preserve of the elite. ‘Avant-gardism’ can then be
seen as displays of artistic power by ‘transgressing’,
incorporating more aspects of society into ‘art’. Thus
the arts can be seen as effectively a form of cultural
exclusion.
Despite some thirty years of ‘community arts’
activity in one form or another, “taking part in the
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arts in Ireland varies depending on your level of
education, socio-economic status, the area in which
you live, and your age.” (NESF Report No.35: Arts,
Cultural Inclusion and Social Cohesion, 2007) This
suggests that something more is needed than what
has gone on to date if this situation is to change.
One argument is that ‘community arts’ therefore
needs to break the link between the arts and the
distinction-making uses made of them by those on
top - which implies “nothing less than a social and
cultural revolution.” Otherwise ‘community arts’ risks
becoming another form of cultural paternalism, as
“all forms of cultural paternalism have in common
the belief that art is a social good that should be
made available to the community at large.” (Tom
Duddy, “The Politics of Creativity”, Circa, 67, Spring
1994).
A core issue here is the idea of autonomy
(individual freedom) and art. Traditionally the artist
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has been seen as an autonomous individual,
somehow outside the norms of society. Not alone
this, but art itself has also insisted on its autonomy,
its separation from the rest of the world. The
argument is that this is art’s only way of being
political. “Art is not political owing to the messages
and feelings that it carries on the state of social and
political issues. It is not political owing to the way it
represents social structures, conflicts or identities. It
is political by virtue of the very distance that it takes
with regard to those functions.” (Jacques Ranciere,
The Politics of Aesthetics, 2004) The risk is that art
that pretends to be critical can be just an
aestheticisation of clichés and problems, “a fast and
cheap alternative to political debate and activity.”
(Catherine David, “Aesthetics and Politics” in Cork
Caucus on art, possibility and democracy, 2006) “If
the work is shown without any prospect that it will
have an effect, its display becomes mere
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performance and its viewing a form of
entertainment.” (Julian Stallabrass, Art Incorporated:
The Story of Contemporary Art, 2004) Thus we can
see how the development of ‘relational aesthetics’
may have served the State, neutralising opposition
by substituting art for political action.
2. Community: Autonomy, Structure and Identity
The idea of the struggle between the Aesthetic
and Ethical has been applied by Zygmunt Bauman
to the concept of ‘community’ (Bauman, Community:
Seeking Safety in an Insecure World, 2001). ‘Ethical’
communities are ones where obligations run deep,
and it is difficult to leave. There are two main types
of ethical community:
Community of place: Territorial coalitions of diverse local interests; Structured, traditional, hierarchical; Conflict is resolved through
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negotiation or ultimately delegated violence; Exit is difficult and high-cost. Community of kin: Clan-based social structure; Structured, traditional, hierarchical; Conflict resolved through negotiation or ultimately direct violence; Exit is extremely difficult and very high cost.
Where two such systems co-exist, there is often
conflict, as can be seen in parts of rural Ireland
where the ‘settled community’ (a community of
place) are extremely hostile to Travellers (based on
a community of kin system). By contrast, ‘Aesthetic’
communities have shallower bonds and are often
short-term, and are usually based on a ‘community
of interest’. They represent the interests of a
particular group, and conflict is resolved through
negotiation or ultimately dissolution. Exit is easy and
low cost - you can simply leave the group.
The basis of community is the idea of collectivity,
the relation of the individual to the group. This is the
function of community, to provide identity and
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security and facilitate collective action. The security
is provided through a structure based on tradition
and hierarchy, strongest in ethical communities.
Community is based on exchanging liberty for
security, swapping autonomy for structure, thus
entering into the collective and finding safety there.
This is at odds with the whole direction of capitalism,
which has been to transform us into individual
consumers, unable to resist collectively. As a result,
most philosophers regard ‘community’ as
‘inoperative’, aspirational, a metaphor of the future
or simply impossible in the contemporary world (e.g.
Jean-Luc Nancy, Bauman, Giorgio Agamben, Etienne
Balibar, etc.).
However, the theory of Liberal democracy
remains based on the autonomous individual (the
citizen), engaging freely in a political ‘community’
(the State).
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In order to claim the right to participate, the
individual must satisfy the requirements of
nationality, age and full legal agency. This excludes
young people, legal and illegal immigrants, asylum
seekers and other non or ‘semi’ citizens. Citizenship
is increasingly being used by the State as a form of
social control, and notions of ‘cultural citizenship’
explore the idea of people creating society and
meaning in the cultural marketplace, unmediated by
the state – but confined to citizens.
There is clearly a tension between the autonomy
of the citizen and the structure provided by the state,
a tension mediated through the laws – but also
through money. As Alexis De Tocqueville (an early
theorist of democracy) said, “When all the members
of a community are independent of or indifferent to
each other, the co-operation of each of them can be
obtained only by paying for it: this infinitely
multiplies the purposes to which wealth may be
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applied and increases its value.” (Democracy in
America, 1831) Thus ‘community’ becomes a service
to be provided – and paid for – like any other, but
dependent also on the initial condition of citizenship.
This mechanism combines an illusion of autonomy
for the citizen with a structure of governance
through the medium of money. It is the basis of the
capitalist economy based on a network of
competing ethnically-defined nation-states
composed of individual citizens. This has solved the
problem of how to combine mass consumerism with
an individualistic society, and has the added
advantage of creating a body of Others, who can be
exploited with impunity as they do not have ‘civil
rights’ (the rights of citizens).
Questions then arise as to the role of culture in
such a structure. One suggestion was that “We
should be thinking about civil culture, civil meaning
belonging to citizens, and about participatory
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practices.” (Declan McGonagle, “The City Arts
Centre: It hasn't gone away, you know”, in Contexts:
Arts and Practice in Ireland, No.1, 2002) This clearly
feeds into the idea of the State itself as being in
control of the culture, as the very category of ‘citizen’
is dependent on the existence of the State. This is
more than just a quibble about exclusive language,
therefore. It is at the core of the question whether
arts-based community development wants to be
simply part of governance – or whether it sees itself
as a force for social change, up to and including
opposition to the State?
Another issue is the role of minorities and their
right to community and identity. Do we grant
minority ‘communities’ external rights – can ‘they’
speak with a collective voice to the majority? Who
gets to be a representative of a community? What
about the internal constraints within a community:
must the internal lives of communities mirror public
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norms of equality, nondiscrimination, due process,
etc.? If yes, does this invite state institutions “to
colonize social life in the name of progressive public
ideals”? (Rosenblum and Post, Civil Society and
Government, 2001) If no, do we run the risk of the
‘Medusa Syndrome’, where “acts of recognition and
the civil apparatus of such recognition […] ossify the
identities that are their object”? (Appiah, The Ethics
of Identity, 2005) If I am recognised ‘as a’ Traveller/
Asylum Seeker/ Disabled person or any other
category, can I ever escape being talked to ‘as a’ –
and just be myself? With the emphasis on ‘diversity’
in much arts-based community development, are we
simply cementing people forever in their ‘target
groups’?
3. The Rural: Identity and Modernity
In an Irish context, the ‘rural’ was traditionally
seen as the ‘cultural heart’ of the nation. But just
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what is the ‘rural’? Definitions range from describing
it as a “territory without services” (the American
Rural Sociological Society), to the classic 19th
century distinction between the modern goal-
oriented world of the urban gesellschaft (society)
and the organic, tradition-based rural gemeinschaft
(community), to the contemporary ‘metro’ and
‘nonmetro’. If rural people do live in world of at least
fewer services, are they somehow different kinds of
citizens, less ‘civil’, perhaps even ‘wild’- just like the
landscape?
This has historical resonance with the colonial
period of the early 17th century, when the
Plantations used a metaphor of gardening, and ‘the
natives’ were described as “weeds” that if
unchecked would overgrow the good corn, the “civil
persons”. ( Sir John Davies, A Discovery of the True
Causes why Ireland was never Entirely
Subdued,1612, quoted in Clare Carroll “Barbarous
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Slaves and Civil Cannibals: Translating Civility in
Early Modern Ireland” 2003 ) Although the Irish
were regarded as a people without history before
the conquest, there was of course a history, much of
which survived in ‘unofficial culture’, in the form of
folklore. UNESCO has defined ‘folklore’ as “the
totality of tradition-based creations of cultural
community, expressed by a group of individuals and
recognized as reflecting the expectations of a
community in so far as they reflect its cultural and
social identity.” This definition reflects the notion of
a ‘cultural community’, having its own expectations
and a social and cultural identity, somehow standing
apart from the rest of the world. Central to this vision
is the idea that people in rural areas somehow live
in more ‘real’ communities than those in towns or
cities.
At the same time, there is an acknowledgement
that much of rural life is in crisis, with globalisation
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decimating the agricultural basis of the rural
economy. This has led to calls for ‘rural regeneration’
through a ‘return to community’. Included in this
programme of community development and
regeneration is an agenda of self-determination and
autonomy: ‘Autonomous development involves local
people taking control of their development agenda.
It is the ultimate form of empowerment’. (Croagh
Patrick Heritage Trail leaflet, 2009.) There are
several issues here, not least the fact that such
‘autonomy’ is only possible with the assistance of a
plethora of ‘agencies’, both local, national and,
increasingly, international. Also, just who is ‘local’?
Could such calls be masking the increasing reach of
globalised capital, giving legitimacy to the role of the
state in intimate areas of people’s lives? This rather
abstract sounding question becomes very real when
faced with the input of Shell into ‘community
projects’ in North Mayo, for example.
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Stuart Hall ( in “Notes on Deconstructing ‘the
Popular’”, from R. Samuel (Ed.), People’s History and
Socialist Theory, 1981) suggests that the State
constantly struggles to create and defend an
‘official’ culture against continually emerging forms
of ‘unofficial’ culture. The impact of state capture of
unofficial forms of culture can be seen very starkly
in my own local area of south Mayo. In an area of
roughly 200 square miles with no town, there are
five local halls, all of which used to host amateur
drama groups, an annual feis, set dancing and
several of them were home to fife and drum bands
until the 1970s. With vastly increased expenditure on
the arts at County Council level and the arrival of
both community arts and Arts Centres in the urban
areas, almost all of this activity has died out, with the
exception of set dancing in two of the halls. The
implication is that ‘community arts’ may have been
part of a disciplining of local popular culture,
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confining all arts activity either to institutional
settings or an expression of marginality. Can the
idea of the rural as a space ‘outside’ modernity
survive ‘community development’? What could the
role of arts-based community development be in
such a process?
4. Arts-based Community development
To return, we can see that there are dragons
lurking in some of the bogholes. Rather than trying
to define what arts-based community development
is (or might be), it might be useful to look briefly at
where it came from. The Irish community arts
movement rapidly expanded in both quantity and
sophistication in the 1980s. By contrast, community
development, especially in the rural areas, goes
back to the Co-operative movement at the turn of
the 20th century. Around 1990, there was an
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increased focus on cultural citizenship and hugely
expanded state investment in and control of culture.
At least partly in response to this, Irish community
arts activity divided into two strands: community-
based arts development, supported by the Arts
Council and the cultural institutions; and arts-based
community development, supported by the
Community Development Projects, a wide variety of
statutory agencies and the voluntary sector. “In the
first, there is an emphasis on the use of art as a tool
for individual and social transformation, to be placed
in the service of the greater social good. In the
second, it is the question of extending the
boundaries, relevance and reach of art as a domain
of practice that motivates the artist.” (Ailbhe Murphy,
“People, place and the promise of art” in Lisa
Spillane-Doherty (ed.), Drawing a Balance; A Journey
in Art, Education and Community, 2000.)
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This division occurred fairly shortly after the
Community Development Programme was launched
in 1990 by the Irish Government with the specific
aim of supporting local groups to overcome
problems of poverty and disadvantage – although
critics suggest that this is a way of forcing
marginalised communities to look after themselves.
‘Performing community’ in this manner can actually
serve to accentuate difference, increase
marginalisation and exoticise people – in other
words, the ‘successful’ are always individuals, while
the disadvantaged are ‘prescribed’ community
(Taylor, Public Policy in the Community, 2003). This
maintains the production of difference, seen by
many commentators as forming an essential part of
the functioning of the contemporary bureaucratic
state. This returns us to the tension in community
work mentioned earlier between the integrationist
approach and the oppositional approach, a tension
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whose focus centres on attitudes to the state. With
this in mind, I will ask a few questions:
In arts-based community development is the art expected to reflect the group experience? Can you express anything ‘individual’ through art once you have been categorised and communitised? Are you reduced to only being a member of a certain group/ a ‘participant’? Does this require culture to emerge from ‘identity’, an identity imposed by the state and based on stereotypes?
In an article reviewing the politics of community
participation since the 1960s, Marilyn Taylor shows
how “new governance spaces are still inscribed with
a state agenda, with responsibilities pushed down to
communities and individuals at the same time that
control is retained at the centre, through the
imposition and internalisation of performance
cultures that require ‘appropriate’ behaviour.”
(Taylor, “Community Participation in the Real World:
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Opportunities and Pitfalls in New Governance
Spaces”, Urban Studies Journal, No.44, 2007) She
suggests that perhaps the most realistic approach is
that people adopt “a ‘selfreflexive irony’ in which
participants recognise the likelihood of failure but
always proceed as if success were possible, seeking
creative solutions, while always acknowledging and
engaging with the limits of any such solution.” In
order to achieve this, I would argue that two things
are needed: a clear understanding of what it is that
arts-based community development wants to
achieve, and a clear understanding of the role of the
State in the production of inequality and difference.
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Bibliography and Further Reading
Allen, K. and Ellis, F., Mapping Community Arts, Arts Council, Dublin, 1999.
Appiah, K. A., The Ethics of Identity, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2005
Arts Council of Ireland, Art and the Ordinary: The ACE Report, Dublin, 1989.
Bauman, Z., Community: Seeking Safety in an Insecure World, Polity, Cambridge, 2001.
Blue Drum, The Bigger Picture, Dublin, 2006
Bourdieu, P., Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste, Trans. Richard Nice, Routledge, London,1984 (1979).
Bourriaud, N., Relational Aesthetics, Les Presse Du reel, Paris 2002 (1998)
Carroll, C. and King, P., (Eds.), Ireland in Postcolonial Theory, Cork University Press, Cork, 2003.
David, C., “Aesthetics and Politics” in Cork Caucus on art, possibility and democracy, Revolver, Frankfurt, 2006
De Tocqueville, A., Democracy in America, Wordsworth, London, 1998 (1831).
Dewey, J., Art As Experience, Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, 1987 (1934).
Duddy, T., “The Politics of Creativity”, Circa, 67, Spring 1994
Fitzgerald, S., (Ed.), An Outburst of Frankness: Community Arts in Ireland – A Reader, New Island, Dublin, 2004.
Goldberg, D. T., The Racial State, Blackwell, Oxford, 2002.
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Hall, S., “Notes on Deconstructing ‘the Popular’”(from R. Samuel (Ed.), People’s History and Socialist Theory, 1981) in J. Storey (Ed.), Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: a Reader, Prentice Hall, Essex, 1998 (2nd Ed.)
Hoogvelt, A., Globalisation and the Postcolonial World: The New Political Economy of Development, Macmillan, London, 1997
McGonagle, D., “The City Arts Centre: It hasn't gone away, you know”, in Contexts: Arts and Practice in Ireland, No.1, 2002)
Murphy, A., “People, place and the promise of art” in Lisa Spillane-Doherty (ed.), Drawing a Balance; A Journey in Art, Education and Community, Artlink, Buncrana, 2000.
National Economic and Social Forum, Report No.35: Arts, Cultural Inclusion and Social Cohesion, Dublin, 2007
Putnam, R., Making Democracy Work, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1993.
Ranciere, J., The Politics of Aesthetics, Continuum, London, 2004 (2000).
Rosenblum, N. L., and Post, R.C., Civil Society and Government, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2001.
Stallabrass, J., Art Incorporated: The Story of Contemporary Art, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2004.
Taylor, M., Public Policy in the Community, Palgrave, London, 2003.
Taylor, M., “Community Participation in the Real World: Opportunities and Pitfalls in New Governance Spaces”, Urban Studies Journal, No.44, 2007.
Tochar Valley Network, Croagh Patrick Heritage Trail leaflet, 2009
Tovey, H., and Share, P., A Sociology of Ireland, Gill & Macmillan, Dublin, 2003 (2nd Ed.).
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About the Author
John Mulloy worked for nearly 25 years as a community artist engaged in mural-painting, drama, street theatre, puppetry and mask-making, in settings, ranging from formal institutions such as prisons and psychiatric hospitals to entirely informal, spontaneous ‘actions’. Anti-racism formed a particular focus for his work over the years, leading to an active engagement with Travellers, asylum-seekers and refugees. Increasing discomfort with trying to minimise the negative impacts of state policy on groups marginalised by the state’s constant redefinition led him to research ‘Culture, Collectivity and Globalisation’, a 2006 PhD thesis at the NCAD. His research focus is on arts-based community development. He is a lecturer in the History of Art and Critical Theory in the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, teaching in both the Castlebar and Galway campuses. About Blue Drum
Blue Drum – The Arts Specialist Support Agency is working with the community development sector in Ireland, particularly Family Resource Centres and other community groups. The Agency was established in 2001 to address issues of access and participation in arts and culture work. Blueprint is a series of occasional essays commissioned by Blue Drum.
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Title: Wild Country: Art Community and the Rural
Author: John Mulloy
Commissioned by: Blue Drum
Date: Summer 2009
The information in this publication is provided in good faith and every effort has been made to ensure it is accurate. The publishers disclaim any responsibility for errors and omissions in the text. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the Agency.